23 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

Very good book! Keeping the story line going in the series, Peter and Rina are visiting family friends in NY. While there Peter is in for the shock of his life and also has to cut his honeymoon short to work the case of a missing boy belonging to the family. He and Rina fly back home to LA after the missing boy not knowing just how much danger the boy is in. Keeps you guessing.

When Los Angeles detective Peter Decker and new wife Rina Lazarus visit her Jewish kinfolks in Brooklyn, startling events disturb their honeymoon. Quite unexpectedly and with great antipathy, Decker--an adoptee--recognizes his natural mother at a holiday gathering. Before he can confront her, though, her troubled 14-year-old grandson goes missing and Decker, fortuitously on hand, begins the search. Soon after he learns that the boy has taken up with a dangerously disturbed and vicious young man, the scene switches to Los Angeles. Hard-hitting details, vignettes of Jewish life, and uncomfortably close glimpses of a cold-hearted psycho make this an entrancing page turner. Not to be missed

Peter and Rina are on their honeymoon in Brooklyn, not exactly what Peter would have planned. He also would not have planned meeting his birth mother or becoming involved in a family problem concerning a teenage son who has disappeared.

This book was not an easy read for me. The story was compelling as were the side stories. Kellerman showed what strains are probably going to happen between Peter and Rina when it comes to his work and her desire to "help". However, the antagonist of the book was just a bit too crazy and brutal for me. I found myself skipping past the bits describing the murders or their aftermath. Maybe, I just wasn't in the right mindset as I was reading......I don't know. I do know that Kellerman does a good job of giving a word picture of a psychotic killer and his mindset.

Police detective meets devout Jewish woman & marries her. In this book they are on their honeymoon in NY visiting her in-laws from her first husband who is died. Not the best place for a honeymoon. However, they manage to get themselves involved in a search for a missing teenaged boy.

Peter Decker of the LAPD never dreamed he'd be spending his honeymoon with his new wife, Rina Lazarus, in an orthodox jewish enclave in Brooklyn, New York-or that a terrible event would end it so abrubtly. But a boy has vanished from the midst of this close-knit religious community, a troubled youth fleeing the tight bonds and strictures he felt were strangling him. The runaway, Noam, is not traveling alone. A killer has taken him under his wing to introduce Noam to a savage world of blood and terror. And now Decker must find them both somewhere in America before a psycopath ends the life of a confused and frightened youngster whose only sin was to want something more.

From the book cover, "L.A. detective Peter Decker and his Jewish bride, Rina Lazarus, are spending their honeymoon in the unlikely locale of Brooklyn, celebrating the Jewish High Holidays. But the festivities are shattered when Noam, an Orthodox teenager, runs away from his family and his cloistered community.

Finding runaways is Decker's specialty. But it's tough getting anyone to open up about a missing kid nobody likes, especially in a close-knit Orthodox society where Decker is clearly an outsider. Then he discovers a line to the outside world that could be the hook he needs to reel in the kid and his companion - a dangerous psychopath with nothing to lose..."

I enjoyed the book a lot. My first time to read a peter Decker and Rina Lazarus mystery. It was interesting to learn about the orthodox community, but I felt it was empahsized too much and distracted a bit from the book.

Published in 1991, this is (I think) the fifth of the popular Peter Decker - Rina Lazarus series. I've enjoyed them well enough to keep reading whenever a new one comes out. This one is actually set not in LA, but in Brooklyn, as Peter tracks down a runaway from Rina's extended family.

This is the fifth book in Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus mystery series. This series is unique in that it not only has an excellent mystery to follow but it also offers a glimpse into a world few of us have ever seen. The world of the Orthodox Jew.
In this book the newly married Decker and Lazarus are on thier honeymoon in Brooklyn during the Jewish High Holidays. When a teenager from the community runs away, Decker is pressed into service to try and find him. A good solid read.

LA Detective Peter Decker and his Jewish bride, Rina Lazarus, are spending their honeymoon in the unlikely locale of Brooklyn, celebrating the Jewish high holidays. But the festivties are shattered when Noam, an Orthodox teen, runs away from his family and his cloistered community.
Finding runaways is Decker's specialty, but in the close=knit Orthodox society it is hard to get people to open up to an outsider like Decker.

My commute to and from work has recently been eased by listening to the Audio CD version of Faye Kellermans Day of Atonement. This is the 4th book in the series, and while I liked this look into the lives of (now newlywed) Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, it did not grab me as much as the previous 3. Why not? (Without any spoilers more significant than would be included in a typical cover blurb)

1) The size and/or the pacing. The reading of the book took up 10 full CDs, at an estimated 70 minutes each. I didnt feel there was enough substance to justify a full 10 CDs (or the equivalent page count). I think the book accurately reflected the police process of investigating and tracking down leads not all of them destined to pan out to anything but as any honest detective will admit, that process is not as exciting as they make it appear on cop shows.

2) The majority of the book was devoted to tracking down a runaway. Eventually, the characters encountered the more serious crimes that are the basis of most murder mysteries, but the first of those does not occur until well past the ½ point of the book. Perhaps if the crime spree started a bit earlier??

3) Approximately half of the book takes place in the Jewish sections of Brooklyn. Unfortunately, our narrator, Mitchell Greenberg, was not able to significantly alter his tone of voice to differentiate between the characters who resided in that area, at least not without losing the accent. To me, every local male over the age of 40 sounded just like Jackie Mason to the point where I wondered if they got Mr. Mason to make an uncredited guest appareance!

4) There was too much tension and not enough affection expressed between our lead characters. Perhaps the author was trying to warn us that this is what happens when you devote your honeymoon to solving a possible crime a family missing person instead of more traditional activities. BUT I did not feel the same pull between Peter and Rina in this novel as I did during the first 3 and not coincidentally, I did not LIKE them as much as I did during the first three books.

Despite all of this, I consider Day of Atonement to be a good book. My issue is that the first 3 books in the series were GREAT, so simply good is a step in the wrong direction.